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And you're not getting the hint. The REASON that Valve blocked things was that it's NOT READY in their opinion and anyone dinking with it to make it go and spreading how to do so along with the scripts is violating Copyright law.

If they were entirely opposed to having people tinker with this, they would have left the public URL down.

Even then playing with fire just because one can do it is a bit too risky-- especially if it might be the thing to scare Valve away. While this thing being done now is somewhat innocent, it might raise some fears. Really, The Last Thing Valve wants is some people hacking away with their client. It's their economical lifeline, and if companies distributing games through it start to feel threatened about the safety of their games in it, we'll see quite soon measures being taken by the management. No amount of goodwill by developers overcomes the financial worries of management.

If they were entirely opposed to having people tinker with this, they would have left the public URL down.

If you believe that this is the case, you'd be mistaken. At some point they need to verify against the production system that it works right. I believe we've stumbled across a closed beta test of things here. If so, you're not doing yourselves ANY favors by fooling with it like this.

If you believe that this is the case, you'd be mistaken. At some point they need to verify against the production system that it works right. I believe we've stumbled across a closed beta test of things here. If so, you're not doing yourselves ANY favors by fooling with it like this.

Than they could to something like user authentication on the linux directory or even IP access rules. Every webserver supports at least one of these technics.

Than they could to something like user authentication on the linux directory or even IP access rules. Every webserver supports at least one of these technics.

Even closed betas with register keys and user/pass have leaked so this is mood. Besides Valve leaked already in the past so why should they not leak it again... and the cut it out as they did with scenes in HL2 :P

Than they could to something like user authentication on the linux directory or even IP access rules. Every webserver supports at least one of these technics.

Just because you think that they should do that sort of thing doesn't change the fact that they're probably doing some of that and the public stuff is the testing part (It can't be restricted at some point... And you've got to test it "live" at some point; there's reasons why I've got a 20Mbit feed into my house...)- and it doesn't change that it's an ill idea to be risking them getting sick and tired of us screwing with their stuff that's not been published/announced yet.

Seriously. I wouldn't be going on like this about this if it wasn't that serious a thing we're doing here.

It's not not like hacking ExpressGate where the GPL actually allows this sort of thing. Everyone tinkering with this openly like this and passing patches, etc. around are committing acts of infringement- and at some threshold (and I fear we're getting close here...) they're going to say "screw this" and drop the whole Idea on us.

Isn't this pretty much business as usual for Valve? I think you're vastly underestimating how much of this stuff already goes on in Windows, they aren't some small outfit just dabbling around in Linux. I'd be very surprised if a few enthusiasts hacking around surprised them at all. If anything, they may take it as a sign that lots of linux users want to run Steam and take it more seriously.

Also, creating patches is NOT copyright infringement. If I buy a book, and then cut out a few pages and rewrite a few others, that's not copyright infringment. Passing the changes I've done around to others also isn't infringment. Passing the whole book around would be, but people aren't copying the actual Steam binaries here.

What I suspect you mean is that typical EULA's ban the modification of software. Whether an EULA like that is even legal depends on where you live, but I guess you think it's the idea that matters and not the actual law. Because again, it's NOT INFRINGING.